Fra Bartolomeo

Fra Bartolomeo, also known as Fra Bartolommeo and, in his youth, as Baccio della Porta, was one of the leading painters of the Renaissance in Florence. He was born on 28 March 1472 in Savignano di Prato, near Florence, and died in that city on 31 October 1517. He spent most of his career painting religious subjects, especially static groups of figures such as the Virgin and Child with saints. His importance lies in how he combined the Tuscan tradition with the light, colour and compositional balance of the High Renaissance, a shift in which his friendship with Raphael played a significant part.

Training in Rosselli's workshop

He received the nickname Baccio della Porta, roughly 'Baccio of the Gate', because his house stood near the Gate of San Pier Gattolini. Starting in 1483 or 1484, on the recommendation of Benedetto da Maiano, he apprenticed in the workshop of Cosimo Rosselli. After leaving it he became drawn to the work of Leonardo da Vinci, and in 1490 or 1491 he began a collaboration with Mariotto Albertinelli. In these early years his work shows the influence of Piero di Cosimo, Rosselli's assistant, as well as Domenico Ghirlandaio and Filippino Lippi.

Savonarola and the religious life

In the late 1490s Baccio was drawn to the teachings of Fra Girolamo Savonarola, who denounced the contemporary art he regarded as vain and corrupt. Savonarola argued that painting should serve as a direct visual illustration of the Bible, educating those unable to read it. From this period dates the portrait of the preacher, from 1498, now in the Museo Nazionale di San Marco in Florence, which remains the best-known image of the reformer. The following year he received a commission for a fresco of the Last Judgement for the Ospedale di Santa Maria Nuova. It was left unfinished and completed by Albertinelli and Giuliano Bugiardini.

On 26 July 1500 he became a Dominican friar, and from then on he was known as Fra Bartolomeo. The following year he entered the convent of San Marco. For several years he gave up painting, both out of his commitment to convent life and in the climate that followed Savonarola's death.

Return to painting and the meeting with Raphael

In 1504 his superiors asked him to resume painting for the benefit of the order, and in obedience he became head of the monastery's workshop. That year he began a Vision of St Bernard for the family chapel of Bernardo Bianco in the Badia Fiorentina, finished in 1507. The painting survives in poor condition, but its style marks a change, as its figures and drapery move with a new grace.

Soon after, Raphael visited Florence and befriended the friar. The exchange ran both ways. Bartolomeo learned perspective from the younger painter, while Raphael developed his skill in colour and in the handling of drapery. Their friendship continued when Bartolomeo left for Rome, leaving in Raphael's hands two unfinished pictures that Raphael completed.

Journeys and late commissions

At the start of 1508 he moved to Venice to paint God the Father, Saint Mary Magdalen and Saint Catherine of Siena for the Dominican church of San Pietro Martire in Murano, works shaped by Venetian colourism. Because the Dominicans did not pay for them, he took the panels back to Lucca. In October 1509, working there with Albertinelli, he painted an altarpiece of the Madonna and Child with saints for the local cathedral. On 26 November 1510 Piero Soderini commissioned an altarpiece for the Sala del Consiglio in Florence, now in the Museum of San Marco. Two years later he finished another altarpiece for the cathedral of Besançon.

In 1513 he went to Rome, where he painted Saints Peter and Paul, now in the Vatican Pinacoteca. From the following years come the Saint Mark the Evangelist for the Palazzo Pitti and the frescoes in the Dominican convent of Pian di Mugnone, a district of Fiesole just outside Florence. He had promised Duke Alfonso I d'Este of Ferrara a Feast of Venus, of which only some drawings survive. His last known work is a fresco of Noli me tangere, also at Pian di Mugnone. He died in Florence in 1517.

Style and major works

His figures are generally small and heavily draped, qualities that critics held against him as defects. To show that his style did not reflect a lack of power, he painted the magnificent Saint Mark the Evangelist, ranked as his masterpiece, and a Saint Sebastian so strongly expressive of suffering and agony that it was removed from the chapel of a convent where it had been displayed. His compositions are admired for their handling of light and shadow, the richness and delicacy of their colour, and the fine drawing of figures and drapery. He was also among the first to use jointed lay figures to study the human body.

Among his best-known works are the Presentation in the Temple (1516), now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, the Saint Catherine (1511) in the Louvre, the Pietà (1516) in the Palazzo Pitti, and the Besançon cathedral altarpiece (1511-1512).

Legacy

His pupils included Ridolfo Ghirlandaio, son of Domenico Ghirlandaio, along with Cecchino del Frate, Gabriel Rustici and Fra Paolo Pistolese. His legacy lies chiefly in having joined the order of Florentine tradition to the luminous balance of the High Renaissance. Some of his landscape drawings are also among the earliest of their kind by any Italian artist. His portrait of Savonarola remains the most widely known image of the reformer.